Confessions of a Male Shopaholic

Author Buzz Bissinger comes out as a shopaholic and reportedly enters rehab for his addiction.

Females with shopping addictions abound in pop culture. Cher Horowitz sought retail therapy at the mall in Clueless. Carrie Bradshaw basically spent her entire disposable income on shoes. Now, however, a new archetype is coming out of the woodwork: the male shopaholic. As with most other addictions, it turns out that compulsive spending is gender-blind — men just haven't been as forthright about their shopping habits.

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Buzz Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize winning-reporter and the author of Friday Night Lights, writes in graphic detail about his Gucci addiction (he spent roughly $587,412 on designer clothing in just three years!) in this month's GQ. Bissinger also reels off an extensive list of other designer brands in a manner similar to that of Becky Bloomwood, the retail-obsessed heroine of Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic series. And Bissinger isn't rare in the pantheon of compulsive shoppers: The Atlantic reports that a 2006 study in the The American Journal of Psychiatry showed that 6 percent of women and 5.8 percent of men demonstrate compulsive buying behaviors.

While the image of a male shopaholic is still nebulous and rarely seen in popular culture, they do exist — and with the same prevalence as female ones. Compulsive spending can be a serious problem. After his article came out, Bissinger issued a statement to NBC News, saying that he wrote the essay "because it was the only way I knew of coming to terms and getting the help I am now getting." The author is reportedly in rehab now in an undisclosed location.